Bad Design:

Xvnews Gaffe

Netscape Gaffe

FrameMaker Gaffe

Gaffe 1: dtbuilder "Connections Editor" window

What's wrong: There is no positive exit button. You have to click the "Cancel" button to leave and hide the window even when you don't intend to cancel anything. This mistake is due to wording. Changing the label to "Done", "OK" or "Return" will make it straightforward and not confusing any more.

Gaffe 2: "window ops" menu of twm (a simple window manager) default configuration

Gaffe 1: WS_Ping (for Windows 95)

Gaffe 2: WWW pages that automatically forward to another page when accessed.

Gaffe 3: XV Color Editor

A curious behavior in Windows 3.1: A gaffe or the prevention of user slips?

Windows 95 includes a recycle bin,which allows users to place files in a buffer before deletion. With earlier versions of Windows (which are still heavily used), when files are deleted, a precautionary dialog box appears The options displayed in the precautionary dialog box have a curious property.

Suppose you wanted to delete 10 files called Project1.bas, Project2.bas .... Project10.bas. All of the files could be selected from the Windows File Manager, and then Delete could be selected or pressed. At that point, the precautionary dialog appears:

Are you sure you want to delete the file Project1.bas?

• Yes
• Yes to All
• Cancel

However, selecting Yes to All sometimes has an unexpected effect. The user expects that the task is finished (indicated by the removal of the precautionary dialog), however, after Yes to All is selected, another precautionary dialog appears.

Are you sure you want to delete the file Project2.bas?

• Yes
• Yes to All
• Cancel

Because the user previously selected Yes to All, this follow-up dialog is a surprise.

In fact, in these situations, only when Yes to All is selected this second time will Windows delete all the selected files .

In my observation, when people observe this property they are frightened.They think that, perhaps, the computer has a virus or Windows was installed improperly. However, what makes this even worse is that it is inconsistent. In some cases this doesn't happen and on some computers it never happens. Perhaps, it is an optional feature which was included in Windows in order to prevent user slips. Either this is some feature which can be turned off somehow or this is simply a feature of specific versions of Windows. Regardless, it offers a false sense of security and can be very confusing to users.

A lack of foresight by America Online

America Online has recently tried to encourage users to minimize the amount of time spent on-line. However, a design flaw in some of their earlier versions contradicts this idea

The most efficient way to read e-mail is to schedule a Flash Session at some pre-determined time. A Flash Session automatically dials AOL and downlaods all new mail; thus the user could read and respond to e-mail at a later time while off-line. For example, a user could schedule a Flash Session for 4 p.m. everyday so that it would be ready at 5 p.m. when she got home from work.

However, many persons, especially advertisers, like to attach certain documents to e-mail (e.g. pictures, documents, lists). Usually, when interacting with the computer on-line, the user will chose not to download these files. For, many of them take up to 5 minutes to download. Unfortunately, the Flash Session options do not include the option to "download attachments". Instead, as a default, all attachments are downloaded during a Flash Session. Hence, on heavy mail days, a flash session may cause the computer to stay on line for 20 minutes, downloading information the user does not want. The user is further inconvenienced by having to remove these files from the AOL directory on her hard drive.

1) Netscape

When a new window is opened in Netscape as shown in the screen capture above, and an exit is done on the new window, all the open windows close. This I thought is a gaffe, because, when a new window is opened and an exit is performed on this new window, by intution, only the new window should exit and all the other widows should remain open. This problem was noticed in an older version of Netscape. In the newer versions of Netscape the problem has been fixed. In the newer versions, when an exit is done, a dialog box comes up and asks the user if he wants to close all windows and exit Netscape.

2) Telnet

A problem was noticed in the telnet software that is usually used on Microsoft Windows.

Connection to a remote system is done by choosing items from the manu, as shown in the screen dump above. The problem arises when the connection is not obtained immediately, in which case, the window shown below appears -

The above screen remains like this untill a connection has been established. All this time the user is not informed if it attempting to establish a connection or if the software is dead. I usually kill the process and restart the software. It would have been nice if some sort of a status message was displayed while it was attempting to make a connection to the remote system.

3) Unix command 'mail'

The Unix command mail does not give sufficient feedback to the user. It does not inform the user if it was succesful in sending the mail or not. Here is a sample

Mail to a valid email address

{acmex:/tnt6/58/rv17/moc:151} mail gt0115d@prism < letter

{acmex:/tnt6/58/rv17/moc:152}

Mail to an invalid email address

{acmex:/tnt6/58/rv17/moc:152} mail nonexistant@prism < letter

{acmex:/tnt6/58/rv17/moc:153}

As can be seen above, the user is just not informed if the command was successful or not. More feedback should have been given to the user.

Netscape Navigator News Window:

As you can see from the screen shot above, it's tyring to display too much information on limited space. The designers try to get around this problem by replacing middle part of the new group name with '...'. The last part of the title of the article is truncated forcing users to make some wild guesses. The date column didn't even make it. I tried to adjust column width so that the who titel would be displayed, but it was neither easy nor convenient. I thought the the partial display was a bad idea: it raises users tension level, makes me wonder what I'm missing. Wrapping the text for long titles would have been better idea rather than trying to display all the information on one row.

Elm Reply:

As I worked with my partners for CS6751 group project, I had to reply to many emails that were sent to both me and the other partner. Most of times I want to reply to the mail and send the email to both the sender and the other recipient. For example, as displayed above, Lokesh sent me and Greg an email about setting up a mail, but when I try to reply to the email, elm puts only lokesh's address in the 'to' field. So I end up having to type in Greg's address in 'CC:' field from memory. An option called 'Reply to all' or something would have been nice. Another problem with elm command interface is that users can proceed with command but cannot cancel or go back to previous step. For example, if a user finds out there's a typo in the recipient's address after entering that data, the user has no choice but to proceed with title, CC, editing, saving , and canceling sendmail. And then he/she has to start all over again.

StreamWorks Open Stream Window:

StreamWorks in a multimedia program that lets you view and hear low-resolution real-time video and and audio streams that are braodcasted by StreamWorks servers over the internet. The program is smart enough to save the address of all the streams that were accessed by the user. The problem is it only displays them in Alphabet order. This causes a little bit of problem, because I seldom watches anything other than 'ytn.ply' stream which is near bottom of this history list. Thus I have to scroll down every time I want to access 'ytn'. A better way to do this, of course, would be to give users option to display the history in reverse-chronological order.

Gaffe 1: xrn

There are both Quit and Exit bottons. They have different meanings. Quit changes the status while exit does not. However, they seems to be the same. How can one tell quit from exit ?

Gaffe 2: Banner:

The item Student Information Access is the link to the Banner Registration system. It is not clear from the description. Perhaps "Register" is a more concise and clear description.

Gaffe 3: Banner

When I select the Change Class Options(Grade Mode/Var Hrs) from the menu, it will respond with the select term page. Actually I have already submit a term. (The registration is not available at this time.)

menu:



select term page:

Here is a brief description of the Nations Bank PC Banking Software Interface

My first impression at the start of this software was that it was too cluttered. The rows of buttons with icons and names, the interactive background picture of and office and the window that comes up when the software is started all indicate a system that is not very easy to use. The window shown laying above the background is not resizeable. One can only minimize or quit the window, which is awkward if a person wanted to use the 'office' metaphor background while keeping this window open.

I thought that the buttons below the drop-down menu were too many and redundant. Although providing shortcuts to frequently used options is a good design principle, I think the layout of the buttons could be better designed to include only a few buttons, and with reduced sizes as not to intimidate the user. The use of colors also calls for some moderation. Color use (or overuse) contibuted to the clutter seen on the screem.

The users of this product are more than likely to use it everyday, and with a complicated and busy looking interface as such, it is very obvious that a better product will come along pretty soon.

Author: Michael Solomon gt7183d@prism.gatech.edu

CS6751 HW#3 Winter 1997

Allegiant Technologies Incorporated's Super Card 3.0:

A major rule of user interface design, which we never quite touched on in class, is that once a keyboard command's use has been established, its function should not be changed.

In ATI's Super Card 3.0, they beak this rule. One of the most useful features of this program is that one can "lock" and unlock objects. This is extremely useful because sophisticated projects may have several hundred objects within them. An author does not want all of these objects to just float around willy-nilly. Since version 1.x, it has been established that ^[ and ^] lock and unlock an object. The use of a key stroke command was extremely useful: it saved times and mouse usage, reducing the incidence of RSI. In version 3.0, however, this functionality has been changed. Not only did ATI* alter the function of ^[ and ^], changing it to open and close the text attribute palette, but they completely eliminated the key stroke commands for lock and unlock what so ever.

Adobe Photoshop 3.0:

There are very few problems which can be identified with Adobe's excellent product. It is easy to see why they command 70%-80% of the image manipulation market. However, one function which they are missing, and which users intuitively expect, is that when one zooms in or out, the image selected location will be the new centre of the viewing area. Instead, Photoshop* recentres to the middle of the image and then zooms in. This seem nitpicky, but it does waste quite a bit of time and causes massive disorientation in new users, because new users intuitively expect this reaction. They expect that the centre of the selected area will be the centre of the view selection.

Adobe Premiere 4.0

One might expect many problems with video editing software for personal computers. There are just a huge number of calculations and adjustments being performed on a very small processor. In general though, Premiere's interface is both intuitive, a la Don Norman, and easy to learn and recognize, a la Joan Mountford. That is why the Premiere gaffe is so frustrating. It has nothing to with the user interface per se, but is even more basic. On startup, the program checks to see if virtual memory is enabled, because although Premiere does not require huge amounts of RAM, it does need lots of processing speed, which virtual memory slows. So, a dialogue, which follows MAC EAU guidelines for message dialogues pops up, informing you to turn of virtual memory and reboot in order to have the changes take effect. This is extremely useful. It tells you about the problem and then what to do about it. It even lets you know that you have to reboot to apply the change, which even many experienced users do not know. This is the ideal type of warning or error message. Where then is the problem? The only option given here is OK, which continues to load the program. I have a very fast chip, loading only takes about 3 - 5 seconds for me. But this could take as long as 20 to 30 seconds, a long time to wait, if the first thing you would do when the program is loaded is quit.

Bare Bones Software BBEdit

BBedit is a jewel. It has many great features, but what really sets it apart is that it tells you the time of your last save and the file path of the current document right in the window ruler. The tool menu, which is only minimally useful, is implemented as a palette, and can be dragged around to where it is convenient or simply "closed", using WindowShades. This gets it out of the way but still easily accessible. Beyond this, in the upper left of the ruler, is a small icon which appears if you have made any change what so ever form your last save. How many times have you saved, been ready to shut down, and then had to save again because you couldn't remember if you had many any further changes. BBedit manages you to unobtrusively inform of your current state while take up almost no screen space doing so. Beautiful, simple, and highly useful. This is type of small element that makes me want to name my first child BBeditt

Gaffe Number 3:

The well-known public access ray-tracer, Persistence of Vision Ray-Tracer (POV-Ray), lacks good error handling. I have often used the PC version and am always frustrated by it. No error is ever fully explained, of even partially. (However, the overall program is still quite impressive, especially since it's free.) It includes a parser for reading in description files. If you make an error in the Scene Description Language, it just reports that "file is unreadable." It is not difficult when writing a parser to give at least simple feedback. Even if they would just report what the last symbol that was read, it would be very helpful. Apparently, as POV-Ray is a joint voluntary effort, no one has come forth to volunteer good error reporting routines.

When rendering, the application will occasionally crash. Before dying, and taking whatever you've rendered so far with it, POV-Ray will pop up a dialog box with an incomprehensible message such as:

The Instruction at 85c66f6f referenced memory at efa57e7c.

The memory could not be read from.

Click on OK to terminate the application.

Gaffe Number 2:

Ghostview, version 1.5. When loading a post-script file in ghostview, this unfortunate message can appear several times before ghostview will load the document and display anything.

This causes confusion because it is not clear whether this is a fatal error. I was one of many that would hit the dismiss button once, twice or even three times. However, on the fourth of fifth time this dialog popped-up before ghostview had even displayed anything, I would assume that the file was corrupted and would cancel the whole load operation. Little did anyone know that this message had to be dismissed sometimes up to ten times before the document would display properly.

The problem seems more severe because of the wording of the message. If you're viewing a simple postscript document of text, why is ghostview allocating an RGB cube to begin with. It really sounds like there has been a major crash. I do not know why some ps files cause this and others do not. It probably has to do with what application created the source ps file. No matter what the cause, ghostview should handle the inconsistencies more elegantly.

Gaffe Number 3:

My biggest gripe with any interface goes to Microsoft and Windows 95. What was Bill thinking when it was decided to put the close window and minimize window buttons next to each other. The standard Windows 95 window frames have three tiny buttons in the upper right corner. They are the same colors and have nearly the same look. It is very easy to hit the close window instead of either minimize or maximize. The Windows 3.1 method of having the two sizing buttons on the upper right and the close window button of the left, was far safer.

A similar gripe goes to XEMACS for placing the 'save' and 'print' buttons next to each other. I consistently save my work, but invariably I will miss and accidently hit 'print.' There is no confirmation on the print, so it goes to printer immediately. I end up wasting paper.

1. rn (read news program)

This is the read news program found on the Unix system. In the design of the program, no provision has been made to ask the user, at start, if he wants to add new newgroups. As a result, one is forced to go through all the new newsgroups present. Also, the system prints out the following message at the beginning, which is quite terse "(Revising soft pointers -- be patient.)" !! Such gaffes should be corrected to make the user feel more comfortable with the application.

2. Color Imaging Interface

This is an example of a gaffe from an Image Processing package. The Hough transofrmation is a standard operation performed on images to detect straight lines. When the user hits the OK button, this program gives no indication of whether it is running or has crashed. This can be very frustrating as such operations are usually time consuming. Feedback to the user is very important in such cases. Most applications seem to neglect this aspect. Another gaffe was that the user could not control the application after hitting the OK button. So, there was no way of stopping the operation in the middle, if one didn't want to continue.

3. Spectra (Program for RS-232 communication)

This is a communications interface for RS-232 communication that I had developed.The program was written to communicate with a camera and download images from it. I had forgotten to add any context sensitive help assuming that the user will be sufficiently advanced. Errors occur in such situations, because the designer cannot accurately estimate the characteristics of the user population. Also, there is no help describing the application which makes it impossible to know what the application is about, without having prior knowledge.

User Interface Gaffes

• The GroupWise workgroup software has a main menu which comes up when you double click the GroupWise icon. On this menu, there appears to be push buttons for scheduling a meeting, sending mail etc. Only problem is, when you click on the supposed push buttons, nothing happens. They aren't push buttons at all. You have to double click on the push button look alikes in order to activate the desired function.
• In Windows 95 you click on the Start button to access anything which doesn't have a short-cut (read icon) on the desktop. This seems ok when you're starting programs. My problem is that you have to use the Start button to shut down. What kind of twisted logic is that? I use start to shut down. I think it would have been better to have the shut down functionality separate from the Start button.

The application that I've chosen for my "interface gaffes" is the Microsoft Internet Explorer Mail and News Reader.

I often find myself using the address book functionality that this application provides. Whenever I get email or see a Usenet post from someone that I'd like to stay in contact with, then I'd like to be able to add that person to my address book. For whatever reason, Microsoft has made this simple task incredibly difficult and non-intuitive.

First of all, the main interface for these apps don't show the person's email address anywhere on the main display. See figure 1
This would be fine as long as there was a convenient way (such as a button or pop-up menu item) to add a person to the address book.

But it's not that simple. The address book interface requires you to type in the new contact's email address. Also, you'd think that the address book itself would be a common enough function and that it would at least have it's own button or it's own menu. Nope. To start it up you have to recognize that the address book is actually a menu item under the "File" menu. See figure 2

So I start up the address book and try to add the new contact to it. But wait, I don't know the person's email address (since it's not on the main display). So I close the address book and go back and look for how to get access to this email address. Oh...you have to select the message and then go look under the "File" menu again and select the "Properties" menu item. See figure 3

This brings up a tabbed dialog...so if you select the "Details" tab and look really closely you'll see that the "From" address is actually there. See figure 4. But now that I've found the address, how do I get it into the address book??? There's still no "Add to Address Book" button or menu item. So, you have to copy the address to the clipboard, open up the address book, and paste the address in.

Microsoft has violated tons of user interface concepts in just this one simple interface task.

• There's no shortcuts for a common operation.
• The location of menu items is neither intuitive nor convenient
• You have to navigate through layers of interface components just to get to information that you absolutely need in order to carry out the task of adding someone to the address book.

You can customize the user interface (if you know how to find the "Options" menu item) and the mail reader let's you put a button on the toolbar for the address book. However, the news reader doesn't let you do this and neither of them allow you to define an "Add to adress book" interface component.

There's no way that they could've actually tested this stuff and gotten positive feedback. This looks like a classic example of programmers expecting users to think like they do (or maybe a classic example of bad programmers...)

User Interface Gaffes

Introduction This web page contains three instances of user interface 'gaffes.' A user interface gaffe is an instance when a software program does something that is confusing or hard to understand by the user. A user interface should be intuitive and make it easy for the user to complete basic tasks. Example 1 - Paintshop Pro Screen Capture When using the Paintshop Pro, there is a feature that allows you to capture a certain area of the screen: This feature is difficult to use because when it is enabled, it minimizes the Paintshop Prp Program and allows you to 'capture' an area of the screen. This feature is flawed because when you use the mouse to try to capture an area, it is neccessary to drag and drop the area of the square that you would like to capture. Initially when this is attempted, the dotted line box that should surround an area does not show up, and the Paintshop Pro program is minimized and not accessible should the user change their mind about trying to capture an area of the screen. Example 2 - Winzip Auto Extract Winzip is a utility that allows you to extract zipped archives. This utility allows easier transfer of files from computer to computer as the file size is compressed. It is common to 'zip' a multitude of files for transfer across a network or the internet. When extracting these an archive it is common to extract all of the files in the archive to a certain directory. The extract screen looks like this: When there are multiple files to be extracted, the default is to extract a single selected file which is usually the first file. Without changing the default values, the program wil only extract one file despite how many files are selected. Example 3 - Microsoft Word Auto Format When typing in Microsoft Word, it is laced with automatic formatting agents that are supposed to make typing documents easier. One of these features includes the automatic numbering feature. When a user types a number followed by text and presses the return key, Microsoft Word automatically places a number 2 at the beginning of the new line. A user may not always want a numbered list, however, Microsoft Word makes assumptions as to the intentions of the user. Also when creating a nested list, the automatic numbering feature forces sequential numbering of all bullets, however, the user may require non-sequential numbering, etc. These features can reduce productivity due to the extra time required to re-format and re-number lines.

Netscape

Most of the Netscape gaffes I found are from X-windows version 3.

General
Open Location boxes are of limited length in the X implementation. There is no quick way to navigate the box.
Does the "Save Options" item mean you choose options regarding saving? No, it means save the other selected options. "Save Current Option" would have been so much clearer.

Bookmarks
The bookmarks window could use more UI work.

• There is no way to designate that bookmarks must be added to a particular folder, on any platform.
• Single-clicking on a file name on a Mac or in Win95 will allow you to edit the name after a couple seconds. Not so for bookmarks. Select, then use the menu or. On some platforms, a keyboard shortcut will also work.
• In X, one cannot select multiple bookmarks, so you must drag them one by one to the destination folder.
• When you select a bookmark on a bit-mapped X-term, it is not highlighted.
• Sometimes the item you click on is not selected (and you can't see), as I discovered when I unintentionally deleted a bookmark folder. I was able to replicate the behavior, but there is no apparent pattern. Fortunately the undo works.

Netscape Mail Reader

• Doesn't read mail automatically (unless set up in options)
• From a menu, if you ask it to get mail, it empties your mailbox. Your other mail reader then has no access to this mail.

Help!
There are icons between the sender and subject icons, but the only way to get their meaning is to use help. The term 'Thread' is also unexplained.
The Help menu does not have an option for the mail tool, only Netscape and 'plug-ins'. Netscape help has an item for mail (way down on page - out of sight unless you scroll) - could jump with an anchor?
One has to search hard for the meaning of the icons in the help document.

Netscape News
Also has an unexplained icon. The help scheme is the same as for Netscape Mail.

• The Unix version forgets a newsgroup I add sometimes, even though I have indicated that I subscribe to the group.
• When you select a newsgroup, you have to choose the option to see all messages before they appear even though said option has already been selected.
• It is not easy to read in a file as part of a news posting in this newsreader.
• Attachments do not appear in body of the note. Again, trn was able to do this easily once I waded through the help, and also allowed me to edit afterwards.

TRN

Even when you read the online help, it isn't obvious how to:

• Just browse the headers in each group.
• Skip to a particular group. A simple text pick list would help.
• Review messages previously read.

Unix GUI Gaffes

In X-windows, sub-windows without title bars cannot be brought to the forefront with a left button click, unlike their titled counterparts. The solution is to right click all overlapping or obscuring windows, sending them farthest away.

SGI windows can only be resized by dragging - it is not possible to ask for numeric pixel or character dimensions from the GUI. Getting a nice 80x25 line window for a telnet session is not possible via the GUI.

DT Builder

On the Suns, if you install a menu bar in a window then try to access its properties, the program crashes and core dumps consistently.
In PC Solaris (did=B9nt use Suns after above experience), saving a COPY of your interface via the main menu produces an unusable file. So much for attempting to experiment or back up.

On one occasion after completing my assignment and saving regularly, my files become "unreadable" for no apparent reason. Fortunately I was able to restore the backup files.

Clicking on controls tends to change their location and sometimes the size of the enclosing window. This changes all the constraint info used for resizing as well, so one must now edit them again. This is the most 'egg-like' feature I saw.

When the location of a control is changed in the property editor, the control does not move sometimes. I discovered that I had to change the location to a default setting, then to the desired location to get it to comply - sometimes.

Word 6

You cannot tell Word 6 the format of a file - It assumes one. I tried to read an HTML file as text, but it converted the tags. The Open File dialog box has a pull-down menu of file formats, but Word simply displays the names of files of that type in the file selection list.
Solution - open the text file in a 'dumb' editor, then cut and paste into Word.

Trying to save this document as text, I discovered that Word uses some othe= r quote character, unrecognized by web browsers, e.g. haven=B9t. I turned o= ff the smart quote feature (which I happen to know exists by chance) via a = dialog box. No change. Search an d replace ignored me. I had to move the file to another editor.

Mac OS

The Mac OS has a long-standing file info update problem as well - when you save a file, it can take a while for the time and size to be updated. Even when you open the file info window, the old info is there. When you copy the file, say to another disk, it will often use the old date. I have even seen fetch, a popular shareware ftp program, use old file sizes for transfers.

Solution: close the window containing the file, then reopen it.

File Sharing
In my opinion, the most confusing aspect of the Mac OS is setting up file sharing.
To share files, one must:

• Choose an appropriate net media via the Network control panel
• Choose appropriate network transport protocol via the Network Software
• Selector control panel (this will work without selection though perhaps not optimally)
• Use the Chooser to turn on Appletalk
• Turn on file sharing using the Sharing Setup Panel
• Select the drive(s) or folder(s) to be shared.
• Choose "Sharing..." from the File Menu.
• Select how the item(s) is/are to be shared, one by one.

I find the choosing of permissions for various users/groups on drives/folders quite confusing. When you set permissions for a user, then use the pull-down menu to select another user, does this mean that the settings for the first user is saved?

Oh yes, you also need to open the Users & Groups control panel and set connect capabilities for each user, and create users as needed.

RAM Disk

When I opened the panel to turn it off, The radio button was dimmed and there was a message stating that "The RAM disk settings cannot be changed while it is being shared"
I checked the RAM disk - IT was not being shared. I guessed that I might have to turn file sharing off for the entire machine (and disconnect any external users).
This worked.

Windows 95

• A Program has executed an Illegal Instruction. Close/Restart
• Choose a Startup Mode (Safe Recommended).
• Starting in Safe Mode (then reboots)
• The Windows registry is Corrupted.

Usually a screen with background only would come up. Occasionally it would start up normally, but hang at unpredictable times.

By use of Alt-Esc to bring up the task list, I somehow managed to convince it to start normally, got at the control panels and removed a SCSI driver. This seemed to cure it. No message gave me a clue to the problem.

I used the system configuration program to remove a startup program. It now complains that it can't find it on startup - the config program did not remove the entry from the config.sys and other system files.

Screen Shots

Smile

1. 

   This is a UNIX application which displays the status of a group of voice channels served by the machine. I spotted 2 major problems with this interface:

   • If you do not have access to the function keys, you can get to the options by using the tab key and then pressing the down arrow to move across the screen. It's not obvious that the tab key will allow access to these options, and the use of the down arrow instead of multiple tabs, or the left and right arrows is not intuitive.

   • The "UNIX" option at the bottom of the screen is confusing to users. The option puts the user in a separate shell while continuing to run the display. Some confuse it with returning back to the UNIX shell they were in previously. This is a potential danger since the user could have multiple instances of this intensive application running and not realize it.

---

2. 

   This is an error from Solaris CDE DTBuilder. I created an interface with the tool and saved my work. The next time I tried to load the file I got this error message. Obviously the application wrote something incorrectly to the file when I was creating it. I'm just not sure that this information is relevant to the user, and what's worse is that I was unable to load the file in any capacity. I think a better alternative would be to just say that there is an error with the file and it is unable to load.

---

3. I was installing a Microsoft Windows 95 application recently and when the installation routine realized that I already had a more recent version of a file it was supposed to copy into place I was asked if I wanted to "keep the file." The only problem was that it wasn't clear which one I was keeping.

Gaffe1

I was trying to install Real Audio in Windows95, the GT version that students can use (it is located at the left bottom of the screen ("ra32_201..."); and I receive an error message, " This program Microsoft Windows.". I can't get around this error message. If I place the installation file in a directory and restart it or try running it at the Run command in Windows95, I still receive this error message.

Gaffe2

Demonstration software of a circuit design application presents a blank screen (Image 2) after multiple screens with writing and a command button (Image 1). I am sure what I should do next. If I wait or click the blank screen (Image 2), then Image 3 is the result. This is one of several demos that this application offers and each one ends the same.

Image 1 : Going through the demo


 




Image 2:  Blank screen at the end of the demo








Image 3:  After a single click on the screen

Gaffe3

In the File menu, I use the New command and it brings up notepad as the editor for the application. I create a CTMethod.m file (image 1) and save it. But instead of the extenstion as .m, the extension is given as .m.txt. Unfortunately, when I try to open the file, I don't see it as a one of.m files (image 2). I try to type in the name of the file (image 2); and I receive this error message (image 3).

Image 1:  Trying to save a new .m file in Matlab








Image 2:  Trying to open the file 


 





Image 3:  The error message  

The first one is in Microsoft Office version 4.2. In windows in the program manger you go File/Run and enter a command. If you enter the command cal instead of calc, you get an error message saying "Can not find cal (or one of its components). Check to ensure the path and filename are correct and that all required libraries are available" and a chance to re-enter a correct command. If you use the Microsoft Office toolbar and customize it to have a run icon, whenever you run a bad command you do not get a error message. Nothing happens, you are just sitting there waiting for your command to execute and at some point you realize that its not going to happen and you need to re-enter the command. If you use a later version the problem has been corrected.

The second gaff I get is in Netscape Navigator version 2.1. Sometimes I get an error message saying "reentrant call to Interrupt windows." I don't know what this means, but when I click OK, my location is opened fine. I do know that it only happens whenever I view the site http:\\www.famu.edu and not even all the time when I view it. Sometimes it happens when I first go to the page and then sometimes when I click on a link from that page.

The third gaff is not a bad error message or no error message it is just a small annoyance in Netscape Navigator version 2.1. Sometimes when trying to visit a site I get the error message "Network error occurred unable to connect to server. The server may be down or unreachable. Try connecting again later. Using cached copy instead." Very good error message, easy to understand, clear, and concise. The problem is you get the message three or four times when loading one location, and its just annoying to have to click OK so many times.